Sonus Founders Rubin Gruber and Michael Hluchyj Appointed to Board of Directors, Technical Advisory Council

WESTFORD, Mass., September 8, 1999 - Sonus Networks, an emerging leader in carrier-class packet telephony solutions, today announced that the company's founder and chairman, Rubin Gruber, and Dr. Michael Hluchyj, Sonus' founder and chief technology officer, have been elected to key advisory bodies in the International Softswitch^TM Consortium. At the Softswitch Consortium's first Annual Meeting, held July 21, 1999 in Santa Clara, California, Mr. Gruber was one of 11 industry visionaries named to the Board of Directors. Also at the meeting, the Consortium appointed nine leading technologists, including Dr. Hluchyj, to serve on the Technical Advisory Council. 

In addition to Mr. Gruber, the Consortium's Board of Directors comprises: Ike Elliott, Level 3 Communications (chairman); Jeff Pulver, pulver.com (vice chairman); Kenneth Coit, Fujitsu (secretary); Martin Lapierre, Alcatel; Ned Hooper, Cisco Systems; Stan Hanks, Enron Communications; Claus Pederson, Hewlett-Packard; Micaela Giuhat, IEX; Mike Borsetti, NorthPoint Communications; and Spero Koulouras, UT Starcom. 

The Technical Advisory Council (TAC), which is responsible for forming working groups and setting the technical work plan for the Consortium, will be led by chairman Pete O'Connell of Alcatel. Eight other members were elected to serve on the TAC, including: Cary Fitzgerald, Cisco Systems; Andrew Dugan, Level 3 Communications; Brian Rosen, Marconi Communications; Rolf Maste, Nokia; Mike Hluchyj, Sonus Networks; Virgil Long, Tekelec; Scott Pickett, Vertical Networks; and Luan Dang, Vovida Networks. 

A well-known and successful entrepreneur, Mr. Gruber brings to the Board significant experience in the voice, video and data communications industries. Additionally, Mr. Gruber has been extensively involved in the founding and leadership of industry organizations similar to the Softswitch Consortium, including the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium (IMTC), the Personal Conferencing Working Group (PCWG), and the Multimedia Communications Community of Interest (MCCOI). 

In his position on the Technical Advisory Council, Dr. Hluchyj will leverage his considerable expertise in developing and promoting industry standards. He was a key contributor to Frame Relay and ATM standards, and more recently has participated in the IETF, Tiphon, and ITU-T SG16 standards for VoIP. Dr. Hluchyj is a Fellow of the IEEE and is widely published on subjects such as high-performance packet switching and traffic management in integrated networks. 

"We believe the Softswitch Consortium will play a critical role in advancing technologies that will bridge the gap between the PSTN environment and the data world," commented Gruber. "Mike and I are honored to join our peers in leading the Consortium to advance the standards and interoperability measures that will make convergence a reality." 

In addition to electing the Board of Directors and Technical Advisory Council, the Consortium formed five working groups and outlined upcoming events. The Consortium will hold its first developer's conference October 1, 1999 at the Cobb Galleria in Atlanta, GA. The event will directly follow the Fall '99 Voice on the Net (VON) conference. Additional information on the developer's conference will be available on the Consortium Web site at www.softswitch.org. 

About the International Softswitch Consortium

Founded in May 1999, the Softswitch Consortium is the international organization for global cooperation and coordination of internetworking technologies in the field of Internet-based real-time interactive communications and related applications. Many applications emulate circuit switching in software, hence the name "softswitch." The Consortium is a non-profit corporation with open membership committed to advancing IP distributed network architecture standards that enable and expedite application development. More than 50 companies from around the world participate as members of the organization. For more information on the Consortium, visit the organization's Web site at www.softswitch.org. 

About Sonus Networks

Sonus Networks, Inc. is delivering a new class of carrier solutions that enable the movement of telephony to converged packet networks, and the development of a new generation of innovative voice and data services. The award-winning Sonus Packet Telephony suite and Open Services Architecture^TM (OSA) cut the time-to-market for competitive new service products from years to weeks, allowing carriers and third-party developers to sustain and expand marketshare, and build important new revenue streams. Its highly scalable products fully interoperate with and extend the life and utility of today's public network. Sonus, founded in 1997, is headquartered in Westford, Massachusetts and is privately held. Additional information is available at: www.sonusnet.com.